Material characterization of blanked parts in the vicinity of the cut edge using nanoindentation technique and inverse analysis

Sheet metal blanking is widely used in various industrial applications such as automotive and electrical rotating machines. When this process is used, the designer can be faced with several problems introduced by the change of the material state in the vicinity of the cut edge. In general, blanking operations severely affect mechanical and physical properties of blanked parts. To take into account these modifications during the part design, it is important to assess the influence of the process parameters on the resulting material properties. Previous experimental and numerical investigations of blanking process have been carried out, leading to the development and the validation of a finite element model that predicts the shape of the cut edge and state of the material. The study presented in this paper makes use of nanoindentation technique to improve the validation of the previously cited model. To this end, nanoindentation tests were combined with inverse identification technique to approach some of the characteristics of material state like work hardening near its cut edges. Indentation tests were carried out in the vicinity of several parts of cut edges. Based on the corresponding load versus penetration curves, the evolution of the yielding stress resulting from the material work hardening was estimated and compared to the predictions obtained from the numerical simulation of blanking process. These comparisons show good agreement between the measurements and the predictions from finite element model.